Exploration

Archive: September 2003

I’ve been wandering from place to place in the Mission District of San Francisco all afternoon with Doug and Tantek, searching out open WiFi access points that also have open power outlets. We were hanging out at Maxfield’s for a while, but then a live jazz band started playing and we couldn’t hear each other talk. So we moved on, and after snacking on some New York-style pizza (!) have now settled in Muddy Waters on Valencia. What relevance has any of this? Not a lot, but it’s a great excuse to post an amusing picture Doug took with his Sony Vaio TR1AP.

Seybold starts tomorrow, which means I get to show up at Moscone West way too early in the morning to register, get oriented, and get ready for the panel “Speaking in Tongues,” which will discuss the wide variety of standards and choosing which is best for you. Later in the day I’ll present “Bridging the Browser Divide,” a look at the state of standards support. Tuesday, I’ll do “CSS For Navigation,” a slightly reworked version of “Minimal Markup, Surprising Style” (which provided many of the examples in the Listamatic), and then participating in the closing plenary “Future Vision: The Web and Beyond.”

I’d better get some future vision by then, I guess. Think the audience will take me any less seriously if I tell them the Web doesn’t really matter because we’re due to be subjugated by the barbarian hordes of Pluto in the next three years? Think anyone took me seriously in that last sentence?

As much as I like visiting San Francisco and hanging out with such cool people, I can’t help looking forward to my return home. I fly back home on Thursday, which means that for the third year in a row I’ll start September 11th in the San Francisco area. At least this year I’ll end it back in Cleveland, unlike the last two. Contrary to the expectations of some people I’ve talked with, I have no apprehension about flying on Thursday. I figure if there’s one day of the year that’s safest to fly, it’ll probably be that day. Besides, I’m done with conference and client stuff Wednesday evening, and I intend to get back to Kat as soon as possible.

I wrapped up the three-day speaking and training session at Los Alamos National Laboratory yesterday, and it seemed to go really well. This having been my first multi-day training session, I was a little bit nervous that I might have problems with pacing, but everything seemed to come together just fine. The attendees certainly were positive about the material, and how much they learned.

Now I’m off to Albuquerque to catch a flight to San Francisco (by way of Houston) for Seybold. I’ve been four days from home, and have another five before I return. Kat and I talk at least twice a day, and it seems like every conversation begins and ends with, “I miss you.”

It’s been a month since I announced my foray into consulting, and it’s been a busy but rewarding month. I did of course finally get the official site online, but also put in time working with Macromedia, created a three-day training course for the staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and shorter training sessions for two different universities. Between that and preparing to chair a track (and present twice) at the Seybold-WOW Web Design and Development conference, I wasn’t lacking for things to do. So much for using my newfound freedom to lounge around eating Cheetos and playing XBox games.

Not that I would anyway, to be honest. Kat can’t even take me on relaxing vacations in tropical venues, because after two or three days of not doing anything productive, my head implodes.

Someone let me know that Containing Floats hit #9 on Popdex as well as Blogdex, so thanks to all you linkers out there! Y’all are the greatest.

Since we’re mentioning the greatest, we went to see “Weird Al” Yankovic play the Taste of Cleveland festival. I say “the greatest” not because I think he’s the greatest musician of all time, but because I completely agree with what a friend of mine said about him: he’s out there working it every night like it’s the only show he’ll do all year. That’s professionalism at its finest, and I respect that no end. Al always makes it a fun show, a high-energy show, and the only way you can leave disappointed is if you’re a humorless sourpuss in the first place. In which case, what the hell were you doing at a Weird Al show?

And now that “weird” has come up, you might remember I mentioned that I’d received time-traveler spam a while back. Wired has the whole story behind that spam, and as you might expect it’s a bit odd. I feel so special to have scooped Wired… especially since I inadvertently fooled them three and a half years back.